Divergent Paths
by Veritech
Summary: Things are not as they are in the normal Capcom universe. Things are darker, and harder.


The opening will be told in narrative, and will set the mood and main scene for the part. Then will move onto the main part of this section of the story.  
  
[] denotes thought  
"" speaking  
flashback  
  
Previously: Prolouge and ch1pt1  
My name is Mega Man X, or, as I prefer, X. I am a reploid, the first reploid. Beings like myself are machines, artificial life created by mankind to augment their own society. Other reploids, with the possible exception of one, are based on my design.  
Reploids, like the robots of a past era, are bound by the rules of robotics. The most important of these being the first law. No machine may harm a human being.  
Of course, as with any sentient race, there are the those who wish to rebel against the set laws.  
The reploids that do so are called "mavericks". Reploids that seek to harm or kill humans.  
Maverick tendencies are caused by a virus. A computer virus called Sigma.  
For many years, even after my awakening, the fight against Sigma was led by Zero. A reploid of great power, and intelligence. He taught me to fight, he gave me the weapons to fight with, and the knowledge I would need to be victorious. We became brothers, together, we were unstoppable.  
  
Five years ago Zero was attacked, and Sigma managed to turn him into the thing I hate.  
Now I am hunting him. I will find him. And when I do nothing will stop me...   
  
  
  
OPENING Part 1 Chapter 1  
  
Chicago.  
The windy city.  
At one time a hub of commerce, art, society, and life, now the once great city is a ruin. Once tall skyscrapers are skeletal shadows of their former selves. Shattered windows and exposed rusting steel beams mar the surface of their once pristine surfaces. Others are collapsed, thousands of metric tons of steel and concrete forming huge piles. Like massive burial mounds for a former era, beams of steel and rebar pointing into the air like macabre tombmarkers. Rusted hulks made up of the remains of cars and trucks line the once open streets, debris and craters make the wide, clear pathways that once served as the veins of a thriving human city unpassable. A city that once cradled a massive human population of hundreds of thousands now crumbles in total silence, save for the blasting winds that still pass through its wrecked form with a sound not all unlike a howl of a dying animal. Scorch marks and craters mark what few structures still stand, and the very stones of the crumbled buildings seem to give off the atmosphere of death. Chicago. Once a center of human life now dies in silence, a twisted mockery of the glory that it once represented.  
This lifeless ruin was largely abandoned years ago, when it was the towering glory that the humans had built it to be, during the fury of the maverick wars. Battles raged down its streets, back and forth as humans fought for their very existance against a seemingly invincible foe. A foe that didn't need to eat, drink or sleep, a foe that never stopped. A foe that mankind had created.  
Normally, the city, no, ruin of Chicago was, as always the case now, lifeless, as no human or animal could survive the massive amounts of radiation leftover from the nuclear weapons the mavericks used on the entrenched humans. But the form that could be seen trekking his way through te twisted piles of debris was not human. No, this being was as far from being human as a cat is from being a dog. This tall, blue-armored being was a reploid. One of the few that had stood with humanity against Sigma, then later Zero and the mavericks. This was Mega Man X.  
  
_____________________________________-  
  
[I know I'm on the right trail] thought X as he continued to pull his way through the remains of the Sears Tower. [And besides, there aren't many more places where they could be hiding in the region, I've got others searching those, if they'd found anything, I'd have heard about it by now.]  
X was searching for mavericks. A small band of them had attacked a refugee camp and slaughtered hundreds of innocent humans, after tearing through the small detachment of soldiers guarding them. This was actually a rather normal occurrence, and X, much to his distaste, had grown used to them. He, and what other few reploids and cyborgs that could fight mavericks, were simply incapable of covering everybody. So X and the others had to corner off the part of their minds that would punish them for trying to shrug off the death. It was the only thing that kept them sane.  
Looking around him X absorbed the destruction of the once grand city. It reminded him of the beginning of the wars.   
The maverick hunters had been powerful, and the war seemed to be nearing victory for the good guys. Then Zero had been corrupted, and the one man that held all of the hunters secrets, their most powerful warrior had turned against them. He could corrupt a reploid from a distance. Simply project the virus into a machines brain. And he was unstoppable. In one battle Zero alone had killed not only the entire Special Unit Zero, but the entire twenty-fifth as well, and had also turned the entire 17th against X.  
X shuddered as he remembered seeing the eyes of his unit change to a glowing red, and their insane, deaths head grins as they turned on him. Bastion, Palus, Lancer, all his friends. He had had to kill them all just to survive. He had fought and bled in that terrible battle only to see his entire life taken away in that hellish inferno. He shuddered again.  
[Get ahold of yourself X!] He squared his shoulders. [You can't change the past, so move on.]  
X stopped walking as he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. In one fluid motion, X's right hand flashed to his left side, grasped the handle of his beam sabre, and spun. As he turned he drew the weapon, and iridescent blue-white energy blade snapped into existence. He used his momentum to out more power behind the swing as he came around. The maverick didn't even have a chance to give off a startled cry or even attempt to block with his own beam saber as X's blade cut down into his left shoulder and exited his body from the right hip. Cleanly cutting him in two. He was dead before his top half hit the ground.  
X took a step toward the fallen maverick to check it. That was when he heard a chunk of concrete roll down a pile of rock and metal behind him. Then, rueful laughter and the sound of slow clapping. X turned, and sucked in a startled breath.  
Not even ten feet in front of him stood the object of his search. Not his current search, but the search for a man who was the focus of all X's vengeance and hatred.  
Zero.   
  


__________________

Zero.  
The name shot through X's mind like a bolt of lightning, slamming into his mind again and again like the blows of a hammer.  
Zero.  
X felt the hatred and rage he kept hidden from all except his closest companion boil up in him.  
Zero.  
The destroyer.  
Each repetition of the name was accompanied by the sound of thousands of terrified and agonized screams.  
Zero.  
His former friend.  
The thoughts of his friendship drowned out by mocking laughter.  
Zero.  
His hated enemy.  
"Ahhh, very very good X." Zero's entire manner was superior, and carried an evil aura as walked towards X. "Do you know how to use that thing, or do you carry it to remember old times?"  
X didn't waste any time with preamble. He simply roared and lunged at Zero  
who caught X's beam saber on his own blade easily.  
Zero cracked an evil smirk.  
"You really should control your emotions more X; it's more professional that way."  
X's eyes went from their normal soft blue to sharp gray.  
"I am in control Zero." He attacked again.  
Zero smiled. "I always was better than you with a saber, X." With that he parried and drove in with his own attack. X blocked and slashed with a head-cut.  
What followed was a display of swordsmanship that defied imagination. The blades of the two beam sabers were shining arcs of light that continually beat against each other as the two combatants fought back and forth across the rock and debris covered ground.  
Zero was actually mildly surprised. "You've gotten much better X, I'm impressed."  
X's expression, somehow, grew even colder. "Lets just say I've discovered the utility of this weapon."  
"That is all too evident. Oh, by the way old friend, if you're looking for the one who wiped out that nest of vermin earlier today, you need look no further."  
X's scowl deepened. "That's one more reason for me to hate you, Zero."  
Zero put on a face of contrived injury. "I'm crushed, and here I thought we might reestablish our friendship. Anyway, you might want to discontinue this little get-together, there may be something-or should I say someone that may need you more soon. Goodbye."  
Zero disappeared in a shaft of crimson light just as X's beam saber passed through where he had been standing.  
It took a moment for Zero's parting words to penetrate X's distraction.  
[What was he taking about…He couldn't mean…NO!]  
X thoughts came to the base camp, the operational center for what remained of the hunters in this region. He activated his teleportation field and vanished in a shaft of azure light…And came down in the seventh layer of hell.


End file.
